The First Greeks in Egypt

When upon the death of Necho Assurbanipal reconquered
Egypt he re-established the system of numerous vice-kings, who came
to meet me and kissed my feet.

We are informed by Assurbanipal that this governmental
organization was discontinued a few years later, when one of the vice-kings
took all the power to himself, accomplishing this with the help of the
soldiers who arrived in Egypt from Sardis on the Aegean shore of Asia
Minor. Gyges was at that time king of Sardis in Lydia.

At first Gyges sent messengers to Assurbanipal: Guggu
(Gyges), king of Lydia, a district of the other side of the sea, a distant
place, whose name the kings, my fathers, had not heard, he dispatched
his messengers to bring greetings to me.(1)

But after a few years, Gyges ceased to ally himself with
Assurbanipal. His messengers, whom he kept sending to me to bring
greetings, he discontinued. According to Assurbanipal, Gyges sent
his forces to the aid of the king of Egypt,(2)
who had thrown off the yoke of my sovereignty.

Herodotus wrote that Psammetichos, one of the twelve vice-kings,
deposed his eleven co-rulers, and he did it with the help of Ionian
and Carian mercenaries. According to Herodotus, the Greek and Carian
mercenaries arrived in Egypt in the days of Psammetichos, brought by
a gale.

. . . Certain lonians and Carians, voyaging for plunder,
were forced to put in on the coast of Egypt, where they disembarked
in their mail of bronze.

. . . Psammetichos made friends with the lonians
and Carians and promised them great rewards if they would join him.(3)

The Egyptian sovereign placed them in two camps on
opposite shores of the Pelusian branch of the Nile and paid them
all that he had promised."

Moreover he put Egyptian boys in their hands to be
taught the Greek tongue; these, learning Greek, were the ancestors
of the Egyptian interpreters.

The lonians and Carians dwelt a long time in these places,
which are near the sea, on the arm of the Nile called the Pelusian,
a little way below the town of Bubastis.

Herodotus states they were the first men of alien
speech to settle in that country (II, 154).

A glance at a historical map of the western shore of Asia
Minor reveals that the tiny maritime states of lonia and Caria jutted
well into the border of Lydia, whose capital was Sardis. Gyges was able
to provide Egypt with Ionian mercenaries because he had recently occupied
Colophon in Ionia.(4)
Thus it appears that lonians and Carians arrived at the shores of Egypt
in mail of bronze, not because of a gale, but because of an agreement
with King Gyges of Sardis, as stated by Assurbanipal.

Diodorus of Sicily, too, wrote about the first meeting
of the Egyptians with the Greeks on the soil of Egypt, when lonians
and Carians arrived and were hired as mercenaries.

He [Psammetichos] was the first Egyptian king to
open to other nations the trading places throughout the rest of Egypt.
. . . For his predecessors in power had consistently closed Egypt
to strangers.(5)

Diodorus also said that Psammetichos was a great admirer
of the Hellenes and gave his son Necho (the future Ramses II), a Greek
education.

Greek arms, utensils and vases, and the very bones of
the Greek mercenaries in their peculiar sarcophagi, have been found
in and near the Delta, often together with objects of the Nineteenth
Dynasty.(6)

Formations of mercenaries from Sardis, called Shardana
or Sar-an, were in the service of Seti the Great.

The time of Seti is, in the conventional scheme, the end
of the fourteenth century; of Psammetichos, the seventh century. Herodotus,
who lived in the fifth century, wrote that in the days of Psammetichos,
only two hundred years before, Greeks for the first time came to live
in Egypt. He must have been well informed, for not merely the history
of Egypt was involved but that of his own people likewise: his birthplace
was Halicarnassus in Ionia-Caria. Also, in Beth-Shan in Palestine, where
the excavators were able to determine the successive layers of the tell
(mound), tombs of mercenaries from the Aegean-Anatolian region have
been unearthed. Doubtless among all these troops [of Seti] were
many Mediterranean (Aegean-Anatolian) mercenaries, including the redoubtable
Sherdenen [Shardana]; these must have formed the major part of the garrison
left at Beth-shan by Seti. (7)
Thus wrote the archaeologist of that place.

Does this mean that Lydians and Ionians were present in
Egypt when the Israelites were there in bondage? If, as many scholars
believe, Ramses II was the Pharaoh of Oppression, the presence of soldiers
from the Aegean-Anatolian region in the Delta in his days in the days
of his father Seti would signify a meeting of Greek and Israelite peoples
in pre-Exodus Egypt. The problem thus stated will not appeal to those
same historians.

The explanation of the presence of Greek mercenaries in
the army of Seti, seven hundred years before Psammetichos, is simple:
Seti was the Psammetichos of Herodotus and other Greek writers, and
he lived seven hundred years after the time assigned to him by modern
historians.

References

Luckenbill, Records of Assyria, II, Sec. 784.

Ibid., Sec. 785. Assurbanipal called
the Egyptian king who received military support from Gyges, Tusharniiki.
It is known that at that time Psammetichos became the sole king
of Egypt. The Assyrian kings occasionally gave Egyptian cities and
Egyptian kings Assyrian names. Assurbanipal called Sais Kar-bel-matate.